


deny (with love) my labor

by divinemistake



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Violence, Branding, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Choking, F/M, Hydra (Marvel), Kidnapping, Love Confessions, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Bucky Barnes, Reader-Insert, Smut, Torture, nameless reader - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 19:08:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30093777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divinemistake/pseuds/divinemistake
Summary: “I’m here,” you sob, hand shaking. “I’m right here, Bucky. I’m here. I’m here. Bucky, please. I’m here. Please don’t leave me. I’m here. I’m right here.”Or, five times Bucky Barnes has a nightmare, and one time you do.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 26
Kudos: 182





	deny (with love) my labor

**one — god, don’t wake me, i think i was dreaming of you**

Bucky wakes up alone for the first time. The sheets are tangled around his legs like chains, hot and sweaty and too strong for him to break free from. He fights for air to fill his lungs. Something’s wrong, something’s wrong—he knows something’s wrong because it’s dark here. Why did they turn out the lights? They never turn out the lights here. It’s always acrid fluorescent light, bulbs burning out, burning into the backs of his eyes when he’s allowed to sleep. And he’s never alone. _He’s never alone here_.

His hand is trembling. The _thing_ is clicking, metal plates settling in place, a sound he’s taken to believing is what the Soldat sounds like, the devil scraping at his vibranium bones, trying to free himself. Bucky knows it isn’t true. Bucky knows the Soldat wouldn’t have any trouble tearing out of his skin and consuming him, this _thing_ the weight that’ll tie him down and drag him to the bottom of the sea someday.

Bucky wakes up alone and he’s so fucking scared that he’s hallucinating, making up the darkness of the room and the softness of the bed beneath him and the sliver of moonlight reflecting an arc over his artificial arm and then there’s a knock at the door—his handler, _fuck_ —and he knows it’s true.

He lays still, flat on his back, rigid, as if he’s frozen in time again.

Another knock, and then the sound of a soft, sweet voice. “Bucky?” The door handle turns, clicking, and then it swings open with a gentle creak. He hears the footsteps of his handler. When had his handler ever been so soft and sweet?

“Bucky, it’s me. I’m here.”

He bolts out of the bed like it's an exorcism, like whatever nightmare is possessing him is thrust from his chest and into the air, poisoning it.

And there you stand, dressed in a stretched-out shirt hanging off your shoulder and a pair of sleep shorts, your eyes wide and innocent and worried, arms hugging your stomach as if you’re trying to curl in on yourself, your little feet twisting on the rug in his bedroom nervously.

You look like you could enchant the moon, even with your hair in tangles from sleep.

“Bucky?” you call again, but you don’t step back. You don’t step away from him in fear. You hold your ground as he stands, staring at you, his chest heaving and breaths sputtering as quick as lightning strikes the ground. He can’t breathe. If you asked him right now, he’d say it was you who stole his breath, but he knows it’s the night.

The dark. The fact that he woke up alone. That you aren’t his handler.

“Steve isn’t here,” you say, a gentle reminder. Bucky knows. “He’s on a mission right now with the others.” Bucky knows that, too.

It’s the first time he’s woken up alone because of that. Because Steve wasn’t here to wake him up with the soft yellow light of the bedside lamp, with the Andrew Sisters playing on his phone softly, to help Bucky’s brain remember that he isn’t with HYDRA anymore, but safe in the Avengers Tower with Steve and all his friends and _you_.

“But I’m here,” you say, and Bucky thinks he might break in half.

When he first met you, he wanted to tell you he loved you. Love at first sight, or whatever, or maybe you were just so beautiful and Bucky hadn’t seen something good in so long he couldn’t help but see stars when he looked in your supernova eyes. And you felt so safe, god, he wanted to fall into the warm embrace that your arms guaranteed when he first shook your hand, your skin silk against his burlap callouses. He could feel the strength in the weave of your muscles, the delicacy of your touch on his.

But you—sharp, bloody-edged diamonds and empty band-aid wrappers in the bottom of your purse and Bon Iver songs at three in the morning—could never love him. Not that way. Bucky thinks you could love him, maybe, the way you love Steve and Sam. They get your loud laughs and your hard shoves off the kitchen chairs and your weight when you’re limping off the quinjet.

Bucky is lucky to get your snorts of laughter and the half of a snickers bar you offer him on movie night.

Bucky is lucky to get _this_ , where you’re in his room like the goddess of the light, looking at him with such adoration in your eyes that he feels he could get drunk off the way you watch him. Bucky is lucky. Bucky is so fucking lucky that he gets to exist in your presence when he’s like _this_ , a fucking monster of the night, unable to catch his breath.

You take a step toward him, your fingers outstretched in reach. Bucky takes a step back, still trying to suck air down his lungs and feel something that isn’t dread. Your lips curl into the faintest of smiles but you don’t move closer, not again, not yet. He wishes you would. Wishes he could force himself not to put distance between the two of you.

When you pull your hand back and let it rest against your collarbone, gripping the hem of your t-shirt and smiling at him lazily, Bucky lets out a breath and his shoulders sag.

“Bucky,” you say again. He loves the way you say his name. “Do you want to lay down again? You look exhausted.”

“No.” His voice is full of stones, sharp and gravelly. It’s the first time he’s spoken tonight besides the screaming he’s sure echoed off the walls in his room, his siren song that summoned you to his door.

“Okay. Do you want to take a shower? It might help you relax.”

Your voice is satin but Bucky thinks it’s a threat. He remembers how his handlers hosed him down. Sometimes they’d shove him into a cell with all his clothes on and let his freeze. Sometimes they’d strip him naked—that was worse.

He shakes his head, staring at the floor now. He can’t watch your expression of grief or pity or whatever it’ll be. Because no matter what, it’ll be beautiful. Bucky can’t hate beauty like yours.

“That’s okay, too. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want, Bucky. Okay?”

His eyes close. He focuses on steadying his breathing.

“Okay,” he mumbles.

“Okay. Do you want to watch some trash TV with me instead? There’s a new season of 90 Day Fiancé and I need a partner.”

His head snaps up at that, his gaze meeting yours, the smile spreading across your lips in the darkness of his bedroom. You needed a partner? Bucky had been waiting for this moment for what felt like months already, and here you were, offering it up to him. Steve always watched the Great British Bake Off with you, Sam and you played reruns of The Office when you needed to sulk after a mission, Wanda was fond of watching Parks and Recreation or those girly shows, like the Bachelor, with you on girl’s night. Bucky had been waiting for a chance to be your partner.

And you’re only giving it to him because he had a nightmare.

Fuck.

As if you sense his hesitation, you finally take two more steps forward.

“We can watch the first couple of seasons tonight,” you say. “And then when you’re feeling better we can tackle the new season. It looks super crazy. We can make snacks, too, if you’re hungry. And we can watch it on the couch if you don’t want to get back in bed. I promise it’ll be fun.”

His head hangs low as he stares at his feet. Through the dark curtain of his hair, your bare toes step into the edge of his vision. He can feel the warmth radiating from your body, the call of safety he always feels when you’re near him. Bucky looks up and you’re right there, closer than you might’ve ever been to him in such an intimate space, so small and so necessary for the existence of his happiness.

He can never tell you that. Never. And just when he’s about to turn you down, tell you he’s alright, ask you to leave because his heart stutters like a nervous wreck when you’re this close to him and he can’t fathom sitting next to you when he’s this vulnerable, your hand shakily falls against his bare chest, soft tips of your fingers tickling him and making him flinch in the slightest way.

“Please?” you whisper, and Bucky’s a goner.

He was a goner the fucking moment he met you.

The first time you share Bucky’s bed, you fall asleep first, the lull of voices from the TV making you drift off without even a sound. He lays your head in the crook of his arm, tendrils of your hair brushing against his flesh and setting it on fire. You’re so small, so tiny compared to him, and yet so trusting of a machine like him to cradle you in this way. Do you trust him? He can’t believe you trust him enough to fall asleep against him like this.

Bucky wakes up, but when he wakes up this time, he isn’t alone. This time, you let him have your soft snores and the drool running down the corner of your mouth and how you bury your face in his skin as if trying to burrow into him.

Bucky wakes up and he’s not alone because you’re there instead.

* * *

**two — i prayed for salvation and all they gave me was your starlight eyes**

For a while, it’s fine. He’s dealing with it. He can deal with it. He’s dealt with it before. The sharp commands, the rough hands, the jumbled words in Russian he can’t remember anymore but he knows they’re Russian when they’re spoken to him. He can deal with it all, even the pain when they strap him down to the chair and shove a guard between his teeth and he clenches so hard he swears he can taste blood.

He can deal with it until it’s your voice, and then Bucky loses it.

Somewhere, he knows he’s screaming. The mouthguard is muffling him. It’s the hand clamped across his jaw to silence him. He’s screaming and screaming and screaming because it’s your voice in his head saying those words that he can’t remember but he does remember—what are those words again? When did you learn Russian? It sounds like a cry for help, how your perfect lips mold around the crisp sounds of a language he can’t forget about.

He’s screaming.

Trembling fingers smooth over the rough stubble covering his cheeks as if caressing his face, the hands so gentle. He’s never felt something so soft while in this chair. While he’s been strapped down. Tortured.

When his eyes open, he’s staring at the Soldat, and it’s his own fucking hands that’s cradling his face so gently, gently, gently, and he’s screaming.

Bucky surges from the bed, but there’s something sitting atop his middle, weighing him down, and he shoves it off his immobilized legs and it lands on the bed with a soft grunt. A familiar sound.

He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to gain his senses, and when he blinks the nightmare away and opens his eyes—for real, this time—you’re sitting there, disheveled and somehow still beautiful and still frightening.

You’re staring at him, wide-eyed, hand fisted in the collar of the shirt you’d stolen from him to sleep in only hours ago, your body curling in on itself. Were you scared? Had he made you look this way, forcing you to retreat into yourself?

Shame, like the heavy buzz of the artificial lights above his head and the sound of the machine and the wiping of his mind, settles over his skin like all his nerves have gone numb, crackling awake with a painful stretch.

It’s painful. The guilt.

How could he have been so careless? It wasn’t so many months ago (three months and fourteen days, to be exact) that Bucky fell to his knees at your feet, injured and bleeding out on the floor, as he grasped your shaking hands and confessed his love for you—only for you to, of course, press his bloodied face to your stomach in an embrace unlike any other you’d allowed him and asked if you could take him to the medbay. Tonight was the first night Bucky let you spend the night in his room, for no other reason but because you missed him after a long mission, and he’d felt stable enough to allow it because he couldn’t deny you. He could never deny you anything.

And it had been a good mission. He felt good. He felt like he could stay up and watch you sleep and keep you safe. He wasn’t tired. Super soldiers didn’t need to sleep like regular humans did. He could stay up one night, just _one_ night, to mold himself around you as you slept soundly in his arms, warm and protected and loved.

But the heat you emitted, the safety he felt with you in his bed, it lured him like a sweet siren to his watery demise, plunging him into the ice-cold depths of yet another nightmare he still hadn’t learned to control after so many months of living at the Triskelion.

Bucky buries his face in his hands, shoulders shaking.

You call his name quietly. He doesn’t look up.

How could he have been so careless? He repeats that question over and over in his head until it's imprinted in his brain in red-hot letters, flashing white and black and white and black like the static pain that makes his muscles twitch from misuse. How could he have been so careless? He could have hurt you. Why hadn’t you run from the room? Why had you stayed in bed? He could have killed you.

God, the thought of his own hands—his hands—his hand—this _thing—_

“Bucky,” you say, voice unwavering and still so sweet. Bucky thinks about how when he kisses you, your words always taste like cherry pie on his tongue. Steve used to talk about how much he wanted an apple pie, warm and spicy, just like his ma used to make when they would reminisce about the old days. Bucky doesn’t want an apple pie. He just wants to taste your lips over and over and over again, a neverending dessert, a treat, his last good thing before his life would end.

“Bucky!” you say, a little snappier, a little louder. He forces his head up, his eyes catching yours in a panic, and a weary smile curls your lips.

Is it so bad to want to kiss you even after he’s endangered you like this?

Slowly, you crawl over to him, and Bucky is trapped beneath the sheets and against the pillows and in your gaze. You straddle his thighs and seat yourself on his lap, a little clumsily, and without thinking he reaches out and holds your hips to steady you. The contrast of your skin on his is like an angel drowning in damnation and Bucky recoils as if he’s been burned by the fires of hell.

You slide your hands up his sweaty chest to cup his jawline, your fingers notching in the same worn imprints of the fingers from his nightmare. His eyes flutter closed as he leans into your touch, sighing in relief.

“I’m here,” you say. “I’m right here.”

Bucky understands. It was your hands, always your hands, instead of the Soldat’s.

You carefully tip his head upward in order to press your soft lips against his own, and Bucky melts into your hold. All the tension, all the stress, all the bad things slip away from his mind as you let him lose himself in your kiss, guiding him back to shore where he wakes from the siren’s spell, a washed-up sailor.

When you finally pull away, still cradling his face in your gentle hands, you rest your forehead against his.

“Do you remember our first date?” you ask, a breathy laugh escaping your parted lips. “You brought me those flowers and I had no vase to put them in, ‘cause who has a vase just lying around?”

“Most people,” he mumbles, tucking his face in the crook of your neck and shoulder and breathing in the clean scent of your skin.

“Shut up.” Bucky laughs at that. “It’s not like anyone ever brought me flowers before, so excuse you, Barnes. Anyway. I didn’t have a vase to put flowers in, so you insisted on going out and buying me a vase, too, but you wouldn’t let me come with you for some stupid reason—”

“Chivalry.”

“Chivalry is sexist. And creepy. And _dead_. And so you went out and bought me a vase and brought it back so I could put this pretty little bunch of purple wildflowers in some water and we were so late to the restaurant that they canceled our reservation, and we had to go to that little grease trap you call a diner and get burgers?”

“I happen to like that grease trap.”

Your fingers parse through his hair, untangling the strands. “I do, too.”

“And then I made us take them to go so we could sit out by the Potomac.” A smile sneaks onto his face and Bucky leaves a kiss against your neck. He feels you shiver underneath his touch.

“The fucking Potomac, Bucky.” You throw your head back and giggle. “We live on the Potomac, for god’s sake. But it was so romantic, and so charming, and I was so in love with you that you probably could’ve asked me to go dumpster diving with you and I would’ve said yes and still kissed you afterward.”

“Really?” He pulls away to look up at you, a grin splitting his lips. Finally, his arms snake around your waist as if he’s allowed to touch you again, and you sink into his embrace.

“Really.” You press yourself closer to his body as he tightens his grip on you, the two of you falling back into the bed. “I love you, Bucky Barnes. Every part of you. Every version of you.”

He stares at the ceiling, his shaky breaths agitating your flyaway hairs all fanned out on his chest.

“I’m not…” He struggles with the words. “I’m not good for you.”

You don’t move, and Bucky wonders if you’re listening to the sound of his heart beating, thundering like the hooves of horses racing on a track, shot and spooked and no way to go but forward. Onward. Continuous. You’re the only person who’s ever wanted his heart, and you’re the only person he’d ever want to give it to.

“You’re perfect for me,” you say, and Bucky inhales. “I told you—I love you. In the present tense. And, _fuck_ , in the past tense and the future tense and I love you in every single time you’ve ever existed. I love Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes from the one-oh-seven. I love _him_ , too. The Winter Soldier, the Fist of HYDRA, the Soldat.”

He can’t breathe he can’t breathe he can’t breathe— 

“And I love you, Bucky Barnes, who has nightmares and who buys me vases to go with the flowers he brings me and who won’t let me walk to medbay or to my room after a mission and insists on carrying me, who cooks me breakfast and cuts the crust off my sandwiches and who, if he asked me, I would go dumpster diving with.”

Whatever shooting star he ever wished on, or whichever god he asked to save him from himself, or whoever heard him when he was at his lowest and wanted nothing more than a quick death to rid him of the blood on his hands that refused to wash off, he needs to write them a thank you letter.

“I love you, Bucky. I love you.”

He is so undeserving, but he is nothing if not greedy, and he’ll take what he can get.

“I love you too, doll.”

* * *

**three — you looked so pretty on the other side, honey, i almost forgave them for killing you**

It’s all tears in his mouth, wet and salty and cloying. His hands are stretched toward the ceiling but he doesn’t know if he’s reaching for something or if he’s trying to save himself. There is nothing in his brain to tell him the difference. All his memories are empty, and he thinks maybe his fingers are grasping for the edge of whatever nightmare that passed like a ship in the night. Maybe he was trying to hold onto it in his sleep.

Maybe he’s only ever the safest when he clings to what he knows.

Bucky looks to his side where you lay, facing away from him, sheets draped around your naked waist. The curtains have been left open—you insisted on pulling them apart that afternoon and basking in the sun like a flower, your dress the pretty petals as you twirled around in the shining light of the dimming day, giggling while he watched you—and now it isn’t the sun that surrounds you, but moonlight, washing you in its glory and glow like it belongs to you. Everything loves you, Bucky knows. You drink up every single spotlight without even trying, and now, the moon’s rays of reflection line you in silver, your skin dripping in the kind of magic he wishes he could run a finger through to collect moon dust.

He reaches toward you, but then he pulls his hand away. He should be trying to save you instead.

But, as if you can feel his terror, his hesitation, his need, you shift and unfurl from the blankets, stretching along the pillows, rolling over with blinking, sleepy eyes. You’re perfection and Bucky wants to touch you even though he knows he’ll ruin you. He always ruins everything. He’ll ruin you and you’ll let him every single time.

You touch him first. Bucky stiffens as your small fingers brush away the tear tracks left on his cheeks, soft and reassuring in the most unsuspecting way. Every single time you touch him, he feels like he’s real. He feels like he’s right. He feels like he doesn’t ruin anything.

He lets his eyes close so he doesn’t see the warmth in your smile.

As soon as he touches you, he’ll ruin you.

“Hey, love,” you whisper, your fingers trailing down his stubbled jaw. “I’m here.”

There isn’t anything else that’s said between the two of you. Bucky cries. Tears careen down his face and you wipe them away. His grief turns to glitter on your hands, his trauma stardust. You take every bad thing about Bucky and spin it into gold like that fairytale, the one he can’t remember, because he can’t remember anything anymore, good or bad or good or bad or anything.

Bucky cries and you let him, the sobs that wrack his chest leaving scars on your palm from the searing heat they carry. His nightmares are in his throat, tickling his nose, burning his eyes. It’s on the very boundary of his mind, something black and familiar, but he can’t remember it anymore.

What else will he forget?

You draw him into your arms, lay his head against your chest, the long tangles of his sweat-matted hair spread across your skin. So soft, but not so delicate to act like he’s breaking, you stroke one hand up and down his back lazily while your nails rake through his tresses. It’s soothing. He almost laughs at the image of him, a super soldier, crying a waterfall of tears through the valley of your naked breasts. It’s picturesque and abhorrent. It’s shameful. He just wants to remember.

What if he forgets you?

This is his breaking point. Finally, finally, Bucky reaches for you, placing his hands against your skin, trembling but trying so hard to capture you between his palms. He touches you and doesn’t care if he ruins you because he needs you, he needs you, and he _needs_ you.

His hands cup your face and he’s still crying. “Say no,” he begs. “Say no.”

You look up at him so sweetly, so innocent, so in love. Your eyelashes flutter as you blink in confusion, but your tongue sweeps over your top lip in a way that ignites the gasoline coursing through his bloodstream.

“Yes,” you say instead, of course, because Bucky knows you’d never say no to him when he’s like this. You know he needs you, so you’ll be what he needs. And if he hates himself for it, for ruining you like this with hands that don’t even belong to him, then he tries to forget it because he forgets everything.

But he refuses to forget you and your body and how you feel. How you feel about him.

His lips descend upon yours in desperation but you arch up to meet him halfway. Bucky lets his hands slide into your hair, grasping the locks in a death grip, trying to hold onto anything that binds you to him. You’re already naked and wanting beneath him, and he simply has to shove his boxers down his legs and kick them off to join you. He just wants to feel you. Pressed upon him, touching him, swallowing him, surrounding him. He wants it all.

He’s so selfish for you. He’ll do anything for you, but it isn’t altruistic. It’s because he wants you. Because he needs you. Because he’s so fucking selfish for you and he has to have you, he’ll die without you.

It’s like you can read his thoughts because the moment he wants to pull away from your mouth and apologize, your teeth rip into his skin with a nip that brings blood to the surface. And like a shark in open waters, your tongue finds it and soothes over the wound.

“It’s okay,” you murmur at the corner of his mouth. “I’m here. You have me. It’s okay.”

He’s desperate for you and it’s poison—his kisses are venom pouring into your system.

Bucky rips the thin sheet from your body and bares your soul to him, his eyes drinking in every last milkweed drop of your skin like he’s broken you again. He’ll break you tonight. He’ll ruin you because all he knows how to do is ruin perfect pretty things like you.

He wishes you had never told him you loved him.

Hopeless, he delves into your chest, the orchestra of lips, tongue, and teeth playing every symphony from your bones. He kisses your shoulders, licks up the salty remainder of his melancholy from between your breasts, scrapes over your hardened nipples until he catches them between his teeth. The sounds that fall from your open mouth are pure music, the way you twitch and writhe and surrender under his touch harmonizing with your moans and pants and gasps. You’re an instrument and he’s your musician, plucking at your strings of pleasure, heady and drunk on the love you emit.

Bucky’s hands smooth over the heated skin of your body until he reaches between your soft thighs, the glistening honey of your core already coating his metal digits with barely a glance of a touch. You whine at the teasing and buck your hips toward him—he chuckles into your skin and leaves bruises in his wake as he travels up and down the length of your legs.

“Please,” you plead, gentle and panting and needy. “I need you inside me, Bucky, please.”

Your confession is his own salvation and Bucky nearly takes you then and there, his own need—the one inside of him—aching to have you. It’s a consuming feeling, all consuming. He needs you like he’s never needed anyone else.

“I gotta get you ready, doll. Gotta warm you up,” he says, hands gripping your thighs and spreading them, baring your most precious place to his eyes. A place no one else will see but him. Already, your center is drooling onto the bed sheets and Bucky curses beneath his breath.

“No, no, Bucky, please,” you beg him and he falls apart. “I’m ready, I’m ready now. Please just—please—please fuck me.”

He must be a monster if he has such a pretty princess in his bed, naked, begging for him to destroy her. To ruin her. Does she think he’ll feel remorse?

With his hands braced against the bones of your hips, fingers tight in your skin, Bucky enters your warm, slick heat with one fluid movement, sharp as the knife he keeps under his pillow, and it’s like he’s found his sanctuary. You throw your head back to the heavens and scream, a declaration of your love, your core gripping him like a vice.

He needs this. He needs you. He needs— 

Suddenly, his hands find the thread at the edge of his dream and yank it back and the darkness swallows him whole. He’s chained to the wall of the cell he used to occupy, the one with the dirty mattress on the floor, the tatters of a blanket. The guards, they toss you before him and he strains against the bonds, trying, struggling, breaking, but to no avail. There’s no hope. They press the muzzle of a gun to your head, put their boot in your back, force you to look at him.

Your eyes are hollow sockets. They’ve gouged them out and left you bleeding. Bucky can’t even scream.

They’re asking him something, they’re asking him to do something or say something and he can’t—he can’t fucking hear them. They shove the barrel harder into your hair, knock your head around, you don’t even move. You’re so still. You’ve assumed that death is the only option. Bucky can’t even fucking scream.

And then they shoot, bullets ripping through your perfect image, tearing your body into little pieces like you’re just a sheet of paper, your limbs lost to the scatter of firearms. You aren’t even whole when you fall to the ground at his feet. You’re just blood and guts and glory and guilt. It’s Bucky’s fault. It’s all Bucky’s fault.

He’s ruining you.

When the darkness fades, he’s collapsed on top of you and wrapped in your embrace again. Bucky scrambles to press his ear to your chest. He can hardly hear your heartbeat over his own choked sobs but you’re stroking him again, your hands carving out wide paths in the stone of his own skin, reassuring him that you’re real.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” you murmur in his ear. “You’re okay. You’re here. I’m here. James Buchanan Barnes, you’re okay. It’s all okay. You’re here and you’re okay. James Buchanan Barnes, I love you. I’m here.”

His blunt nails dig into your skin, leaving crescent-moons of pain and desperation in their wake. You don’t make him move. He lays atop you, a weight on your body, still inside of you as he struggles to take back his grasp on reality. You wrap yourself around him, a shield, a balm, a quieting to the incessant noise in his head.

And then you begin to sing, so soft, so low, a song so familiar—the lullaby you reserve for him when he’s at his worst. He needs this. He needs you. He needs—

“ _When I went to your town on the wide open shore, oh I must confess I was drawn, I was drawn to the ocean_ …”

Bucky wishes he could keep you safe the way you keep him close to your chest, a brave god walking beside a monster, hand in hand.

“ _You don't know how lucky you are. You don't know how much I adore you. You are the welcoming back from the ocean_ …”

* * *

**four — nothing would be sweeter than your hand around my neck, divine**

This time, _you_ are screaming, and Bucky—he—it—he hates it—he—

This time when he wakes up, he’s on his knees above you, straddling your hips, his—the—that _thing_ around your neck. Stealing your breath. That thing is choking you. He’s choking you. He’s killing you.

Bucky is killing you.

And he can’t get the fucking thing to release you, oh god, he’s killing you, he’s done it, he’s killing the only person he’s ever loved, the only person that’s ever loved him, fuck, god, fuck, his names is James, it’s James, James Buchanan Barnes, he’s James Buchanan Barnes, he has to let go, he has to let go, let go, let go, let go—

“ _Let go_!” he screams to nobody but himself and the metal fingers around your throat pry themselves away.

Bucky is off the bed and on the other side of the room in an instant, your sputtering coughs, your choked warbles, the only sound filling the silence of the night. He doesn’t look at you. He can’t. How could he? He just killed you. He just tried to kill you. He almost killed you.

He would have killed you.

You are dead.

“Bucky,” you rasp his name and he winces. It used to sound so sweet when you would call his name. Now it sounds like metal and death. “Bucky, are you okay?”

He whirls around now, his eyes so wide it hurts, and he stares at you. You’re on your hands and knees, reaching out to him, still coughing. There’s so much pain on your angelic face and he knows he put it there. He knows he did it. He knows.

How dare you ask him if he’s okay? How—How can you still be so selfless?

A war wages inside his head. He wants to flee the room, to flee the city, to flee the state or the country or the world, however he can, and just put as much distance between the two of you as he can muster. He wants to go to you now, caress your wounds, apologize with a thousand meaningless words that can’t take away the fact that he killed you.

He killed you. It doesn’t matter if it was in his dreams or not—he killed you.

“Please.” Your voice is so thin. “Don’t—Don’t leave me.”

His hands are curled tight into fists. Not for the first time, Bucky wonders if he had been normal whether he could have kept you. Because like this, he can’t keep you. He shouldn’t have tempted fate. He should have let you go.

Selfish. Selfish man. Selfish machine. _Selfish Soldat_.

“Bucky, _please_ ,” you call again. You’re crying. He hasn’t heard you cry like this before. It’s strangled, overwhelmed, and it makes him ache. If he could tie your pain to his ankles he would sink straight down to the bottom of the ocean and drown there happily as long as you didn’t feel it anymore.

Your fingers are trembling, outstretched toward him. He takes one step forward. The curtain wavers and a streak of rogue moonlight reveals the purpling bruises in the shape of the fingers attached to his body. He takes a step back.

“I’m here,” you sob, hand shaking. “I’m right here, Bucky. I’m here. I’m here. Bucky, please. I’m here. Please don’t leave me. I’m here. _I’m right here_.”

That thing, the thing, it’s him. It’s a part of him. It belongs to him and it’s his fingers that bruised your skin.

“Bucky, listen to me. It’s okay, Bucky. It’s not your fault. I’m here. I’m here, Bucky.”

It’s his fault. He killed you. This arm, this metal fucking thing, it’s his. It’s attached to him and has his nerves wired to it and he can move it. He flexes his hand in proof.

“It’s going to be okay.” You slide off the bed and onto the floor with a groan and Bucky lurches for you, as if he could catch you, but he freezes in place when he sees the marks around your neck again. There’s a hand at the base of your throat, pressing against the tender flesh, your chest rising and falling in rapid succession as tears continue to stream down your ruddy cheeks.

He killed you. You are dead.

“I’m here,” you repeat over and over again. “I’m here, Bucky. I’m right here.”

But you shouldn’t be. You shouldn’t be here. And Bucky shouldn’t be here, either. He should leave right now, walk out that door and never return, never see you ever again. But he’s selfish and he won’t. He can’t. He can’t leave you like this.

He should, but he can’t.

“Bucky please.”

Mechanically, like the machine he is, like the weapon attached to his shoulder, he walks toward where you’re sitting on the ground, knees knocked inward, calves sprawled wide. There, between your legs, Bucky crouches down and you try to smile at him. It’s weak, sad, pained. He wants to wipe your tears away.

He moves slowly, his hand cupping your face, thumb wiping away your tears, and you let him. You press your cheek into his palm, eyes closed, a blatant display of trust. But Bucky can’t help himself. The bloom of black and purple on your skin in the shape of his own goddamn hand makes him tremble and his fingers trail down your jaw and against your throat.

You flinch.

Bucky throws himself back, scrambling away from you.

“No!” You lunge for him, grabbing the first thing you can reach, and he feels your fingers enclose over his metal hand. He stares at it, the contrast between vibranium and flesh, and he pulls away as if you’ve burned him.

Bucky stumbles toward the floor, leaving you collapsed on the ground, sobbing wracking through your quaking body.

“I’m here, Bucky,” you cry. “I’m here. Don’t leave me. _Please_ , don’t leave me. I’m here, Bucky.”

He slams the door behind him. Your howls are the ghosts that follow him home.

“I’m here, Bucky. I’m _here_. I’m right here.”

* * *

**five — just let me sleep, love**

You aren’t. You aren’t here anymore.

He doesn’t wake because of a nightmare. He wakes because the space next to him, the place you call your own with a familiarity and fondness that makes the ring he’s been carrying around for the past few months a little heavier, a little more prominent, a reminder that he needs to get on with it.

But you aren’t here. The bed is cold, the sheets rumpled.

Bucky is out of bed and pulling his pants up to his waist in a matter of seconds, eyes glancing around the room. There’s no light on in the bathroom. No light in the living room. No light in the little kitchen. He searches anyway and finds nothing. He checks the window in the bedroom. It’s still locked.

Everything is where it should be—except for you.

You aren’t here.

His phone rings from the nightstand and he grabs it in an instant, the screen lighting up to reveal a picture of you—the one he took on the night he fell in love with you, when you rode the ferris wheel with him at Coney Island and you were glowing beneath the lights, happy and beautiful and perfect as always, and he knew you were it for him. The last thing he’d ever want and need.

Immediately he sighs with relief and answers, hope on the tip of his tongue.

“Hey doll, where are you—”

He inhales. It hurts his chest.

The phone slips from his grasp, clattering to the floor. The call ends. Bucky can’t breathe. He can’t move. Suddenly, he’s back on the ice, freezing to death. Frozen. Dying. He’s frozen again, out of time, out of _fucking time_.

You aren’t here. You can’t be here.

The phone lights up on the floor with a message. He picks it up with shaking hands. An unknown number.

And instead of the picture of you at Coney Island when he fell in love with you, it’s a picture of you being dragged into an unmarked van by a masked man, ropes tied around your limbs, a bloodied gash wet and open on your temple.

Over the next few hours, he’ll receive two more messages: a voice message of your screaming and a soundless video of a hot brand being pressed to your skin until the HYDRA symbol is burned into permanence.

You aren’t here. _You are not here_. You said you’d be here, and you aren’t.

Bucky can’t wake up from this nightmare because _you aren’t here_.

* * *

**one, redux — and when we wake, they'll have canonized us like this**

It’s not a violent awakening. It’s not quick. It’s not even sudden. You wake with your eyes hazy and unfocused, the world coming back into view, the ceiling above you familiar. Before this, you wouldn’t have thought a ceiling could be so comforting. Now you know there are a lot of small comforts you took for granted every day before this.

It’s only once your eyes are open, fully awake, that the world morphs into the scenes you tried so hard to run away from.

The ceiling disappears. It morphs into the mottled roof of the van when you first woke. Your arms are heavy, stricken by your side. You can’t even feel your legs but there’s a chill rolling over your bare skin like you’re laying on a bed of ice. Stuck. You’re stuck. Trapped. Fuck. You can’t move. Where are you?

A face hovers over yours, a black mask and reddened eyes. Crazed eyes. Mad eyes. He’s saying something in the language you never bothered to learn more than ten phrases. You hate that language. You hate what they did to him.

Where is Bucky?

He barks something in Russian. It sounds sharp and a little uneasy. Someone else—from the driver’s seat—they yell something back. The man sitting next to you grabs the fleshy part of your arm and jabs a needle straight into the skin.

Everything fades and shifts and changes. You’re asleep again and then you aren’t.

This cell looks familiar but you don’t know why.

You blink the panic and the pain away, out of your eyes, trying to focus on something. Slow, deep breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Quiet, quietly. You need to be quiet. There is no one around. No one is guarding your little cell. You’re in a chair. They’ve strapped you down with something. It hurts, but you can’t feel the texture enough on your skin because it’s all fire and burning and the sting of a bee on your fourteenth summer and god, everything is aching. There is pain radiating from every part of your body, no bone untouched, no orifice not leaking blood.

It’s in your mouth—you can taste it.

Where is Bucky? _Where is he_?

Didn’t he promise that when you called, he would come?

The room is spinning. Everything is dark but it’s dark in a way that makes your eyes hurt because everything hurts. Everything, everything, everything, everything, everything. You’re going crazy. Everything. Hurts. You don’t know if your eyes are open or closed. Are you even alive? Maybe you’re dead and this is where you go when you die if you’re a bad person.

Oh no. If you’re dead, where is Bucky? What is he going to do?

Does he know you love him?

Footsteps echo through the stone prison. Boots. Heavy. Clump, clump, clump. So much noise. Every step resounds in your head with a painful throb. Stomp, stomp, stomp. A soundtrack to listen to. Your heartbeat syncs up to it. It’s like a lullaby you can fall asleep to. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep my little—

The cell door rattles. A black, shadowed figure kicks it open. He’s talking to you but you can’t hear what he’s saying. Do you know this language? The words are all warbled like a bad radio frequency. Static. Everything is black and white and painful and stinging and you can’t hear him. Is it Russian?

Where is Bucky? Does he know how much you fucking love him?

Is he going to come when you call for him? Is he going to save you?

More shadowed figures appear in your slurring, swinging, shifting, spinning vision. So many men in black clothes, black masks, faceless. So many pairs of boots pounding on the inside of your head. It hurts.

Someone grabs your chin in rough fingers. They press so hard into your bones you think they might break. You wish you could pretend it was Bucky, but he would never touch you like this. Even when you ask him to hurt you, he won’t. He only ever brings pleasure with your pain.

He always looks at you like those bruises are tattooed on your neck now.

One of the masked men holds something out to you. You can’t make out what it is. The man pulls his mask down. His teeth are yellow in the faint light of the prison, gummy and filled with blood, incisors sharp enough to rip the tendons from your muscles. The way he grins, so wide, so predatory, it makes fat tears roll down your dirty cheeks.

A knife rips through the thinning material of your sleep shirt—Bucky’s shirt. Fuck. The man tears it off you, throws the scraps to the side, leaving your chest naked. You wish you had enough coherence to be embarrassed. To be ashamed. You have nothing. You’re empty instead and it kills you.

Death is calling and Bucky isn’t coming.

Somehow, you know what’s coming next. You know it’s coming. In your empty little head you wonder if this is how he feels when he clenches his teeth and screams before the pain comes. You’ve heard him in his sleep, how his jaw tightens and his canines gnash together like he’s trying to knock them out of his own head, leaving a row of pink, empty spaces, swallowing the calcium in an attempt to feed himself.

It’s why you clench now, pressing your tongue to the backs, knowing what’s coming.

And then the man slams it into your shoulder like a weight, pushing it into your skin. You’re screaming, you think. It’s burning, scorching. So hot. Your skin is searing. Steak searing. What does human flesh taste like? It smells like roasted meat. Barbeque. Branding.

Someone is shrieking. It’s you, right? Who are you? It’s so hot, the heat so hot, the heat unbearably hot, too hot. It’s white-hot. So hot that it’s freezing. The heat is frostbite now. Is god listening to you? Fuck, it’s so hot it’s cold. You’re screeching again. Or maybe it’s someone else. Bucky always screamed like this. So strangled. It’s molten. Lava on your body. Lava injected into your bones. Your bone marrow is heat. Rotting. How do you cook the rot out of meat? You roast it. Cooked flesh.

When they rip it away, your skin paints a picture of a six-tentacled octopus.

Where is Bucky? God—you hope he doesn’t come save you. Please, Bucky, don’t come.

Please don’t come. Don’t come. Don’t come.

Don’t come.

“I’m here. I’m _right here_ , doll.”

You scream, a hand clutching your shoulder, trembling fingers covering the skin where you can still feel the mountains and valleys of gnarled, scarred flesh even if it isn’t there anymore. No, it’s not there anymore. Is it? Is it still there?

Someone grabs your hand, squeezing it gently, and you flinch away.

“Baby, it’s me—it’s just me right here. I’m right here. You’re okay, it was just a nightmare, doll. You’re safe. We’re in our apartment. It’s two-twenty-three in the morning right now. The doors are locked. The windows are locked. I triple-checked them before we went to bed last night. You’re safe and I’m here and I’m not gonna let them hurt you again. I swear it.”

The face hovering over you, the masked man with red head and red hands and a red-hot brand melts away to reveal Bucky, with flawless sapphires for eyes and a vibranium hand that won’t burn you, but sooth the scar seared into your skin. You take in every element of him that you can. The wrinkles in his forehead, the bruised skin around his eyes from lack of sleep, the bump of his nose that fits perfectly notched in the flat bridge of yours. His lips, pink and a little chapped from where his teeth bear down, are parted in the slightest and you hear the whistle of his breathing.

His dark tresses are falling over his shoulders, mussed from tossing and turning in his sleep. With the hand not shielding your wound, you reach out and touch him—cautiously, at first, in case he’s not real. His chest is sweat-sticky and warm. The muscles beneath his tanned, scarred skin flex beneath your fingertips where you tickle him, letting your nail trace the hem of his boxers until his abdomen contracts in response. When you look up, he’s smiling at you, swallowing back words, his Adam’s apple moving under the dark shadow of his stubble.

He’s here. Bucky’s here. You called and he came. He saved you. Bucky saves the day.

“You’re here?” you whisper, voice lost to your erratic crying.

“I’m here.”

“Safe?”

“FRIDAY,” Bucky calls out, “who is in the Avengers Tower right now?”

“Currently, there is no unauthorized personnel in the Tower, Sergeant Barnes.” 

The AI’s voice grounds you a little, reminding you that you aren’t in D.C. anymore. Bucky moved you both to New York City after everything, into the Tower, more security. Even Steve agreed it was a better option, the new Triskelion’s failing defenses not a huge surprise to anyone.

“Mr. Stark, Captain Rogers, Dr. Banner, and Mrs. Maximoff are the only Avengers occupying the Tower at this moment. The rest are either at their personal estates, in D.C., or on a mission.”

“And there is no unusual activity?”

“No, Sergeant Barnes. I have completed a security scan during this time.”

“Thank you, FRIDAY.”

Bucky wipes the sweat from your brow, wipes the drying tears from your cheeks, wipes the blood from your mouth from your bitten tongue. He presses a kiss there, a perfect kiss, just on the corner but you can taste the smoke and the metal and the whiskey that makes up Bucky Barnes.

You’re safe. Bucky’s here.

His fingers, vibranium and cold, gently caress your own hand that’s guarding the seeping burn by your heart. It isn’t healed. It’s still there. You can feel the ache from the open flesh, the skin that’s missing, the particles of pus and bubbled blisters. Bucky strokes the back of your hand until you stop shaking, and then he braids his fingers around yours in order to carefully pry your palm away from the wound.

You let him because you trust him. Because you love him.

“Look, baby. Look,” he says.

And because you trust him, because you love him, you do as he says and you look down at your shoulder, the space just above your heart, the marred skin you see in your dreams every time the ripping-hot metal touches you.

There is no wound. The skin there is a little pink, a little shiny, but there’s no burn. There is no scar. There is no six-tentacled octopus outlining your heart. Instead there is just a patch that looks a little different from the rest, blending at the edges, a little rough, but it’s yours.

You aren’t HYDRA. You don’t belong to them.

Bucky leans down, his nose brushing by your collarbone, and his lips meet your shoulder to leave a kiss, or two, or three, circling around the wound that isn’t there.

“You’re okay,” he whispers. “I’m here. You’re okay.”

He takes you into his arms, shifting your body until you’re almost lying atop him. Your leg is thrown over his hips, his hand wrapped around it, tapping out the rhythm of a song you can’t name. His metal arm is what holds you close to him, fingers tangled in the strands of your hair as the digits massage your scalp, kitten purrs falling from your lips as he soothes you out of your nightmare and back into reality.

You scrawl patterns and nonsensical drawings into his chest, listening as he hums something under his breath. His heart is beating quickly—too quickly. It makes you nervous. Is he mad at you? Does he hate you? Does he hate this?

Is he going to leave you? You’re so damaged now. Damaged goods.

He must hear your heart speed up to match his because his hand falls from your hair and to your back, leaving big strokes up and down your spine. He leans down and presses a kiss to the crown of your head, lingering, and then pulls away.

“I know this is a bad time,” he starts and you flinch. Your eyes shut in anticipation. “I love you, you know that, doll?”

“I love you, too,” you try to say without crying. “I love you so much, Bucky. More than you could ever know.”

You feel his chest shake with laughter.

“You stole my line, baby.” His palm encases your cheek as he turns your face up to look at him, the depths of his blue eyes stealing every thought in your head, every worry, every anxiety. He’s smiling so pretty, so gently, so _him_ that it kills you.

He’s here—but for how long?

“I’ve tried to give you time,” he whispers and your heart clenches, “but I can’t wait anymore. I love you so much and I almost lost you. I don’t know what I would’ve done, baby. I know this isn’t right of me, but I can’t wait. I can’t.”

Bucky holds out his hand, unfurling his fingers in front of your eyes, and sitting in the middle of his tan palm is a ring.

“Say yes,” he says in a breath. “Please say yes.”

It’s simple, a golden band with three little diamonds lined up in a row, round and very real. It looks so small in his hand, dainty. Unreal.

You swallow, tears burning your eyes. “You didn’t—Bucky, goddamnit, you didn’t ask.”

He curses and a wet giggle bubbles up your throat.

“I’m sorry baby, _shit_ , I’m so bad at this.” Bucky groans. “I love you so fucking much. I know you deserve better but doll, I can’t live without you. I never thought I could, even before I almost lost you. So please, please, don’t leave me again. Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” you answer, grabbing the back of his head and pulling him down to meet your mouth. He can hardly kiss you, his grin too wide, and you rest your forehead against his as you laugh and laugh and laugh, sneaking pecks between Bucky’s chuckles.

He slips the ring onto your finger and kisses a hot, ticklish trail over your knuckles to the back of your hand, the cut of the diamonds catching a glint of light from the soft glow of the lamp beside the bed.

“I love you, Bucky.” Your mouth tastes of salt when he kisses you and you aren’t sure if it’s your tears or his this time.

“I love you,” he murmurs against your lips. “I’m here.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a request for @mallowswriting who I love and adore so wildly that I wrote this awful angsty story for her, who requested the nightmare trope and I turned it into something I really wanted to explore, so here you go! Sorry I got so carried away, but I hope you enjoy!


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